Revising GURPS Magic

[mlangsdorf]

One thing that Crakkerjakk proposed, and that has generally been adopted by the Bruno-mlangsdorf online games, is that energy reduction should by 1 FP per 5 MoS on the spell-casting roll. In general, this mimics the standard rule of energy reductions at skill-15 and skill-20, but is less predictable in play.

I've written up a revised set of rituals for my games, premised on a couple of thoughts:
* It should be possible to deploy mundane countermeasures such as binding and gagging to prevent even skilled wizards from casting spells. Under the standard ritual rules, a mage with skill-25 is not significantly impeded by being bound and gagged, even though a skill-25 knight is completely hosed.
* Non-adventuring class mages (ie, IQ 11-12, Magery 1, skills in the 10-13 range) should be able to reliably cast spells outside of the adventuring context, just like every other profession. The lack of favorable task difficulty modifiers for magic in routine contexts is a problem.

I like your maintenance penalty rules. I'm going to have to mull them over, but making it harder for mages to maintain multiple spells for free is always a good thing for niche protection and play balance.

[kdtipa]

I haven't run GRPS magic in a while, but I'm familiar with the problem of too many buff spells running freely. I've always liked the mechanism of giving a penalty for each additional effect the caster wants to run. So the first buff spell works as normal. The second one has a penalty. The third one has the penalty times two. The fourth one has the penalty times three. And so on.

Depending on how big a penalty you assess for multiple buffs running at once, you can pretty well control the number of buffs players will have going at once. And that effective skill might drop them below thresholds for other benefits of the casting (like reduced fatigue cost).

That was just another thought that might help in my opinion.

But I do have to say, I really like the idea of going over the GURPS magic rules to try to help them out. I support your effort.

[GodBeastX]

I think I'm fine with Energy Reduction being based on Effective Skill instead of Base Skill. And I think buffs just having a bigger impact like Shadowrun or similar would be nice.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by GodBeastX

I think I'm fine with Energy Reduction being based on Effective Skill instead of Base Skill.

That might cause some frequent calculation on the order in which the spells are cast - mages would always start with the more costly spells and then proceed to the cheaper ones. This gets worse with the larger Maintenance Penalty I have established.

And I think buffs just having a bigger impact like Shadowrun or similar would be nice.

What Buffs do you think are underpowered at the moment?

[GodBeastX]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

That might cause some frequent calculation on the order in which the spells are cast - mages would always start with the more costly spells and then proceed to the cheaper ones. This gets worse with the larger Maintenance Penalty I have established.



What Buffs do you think are underpowered at the moment?

I meant impact on casting. In Shadowrun even having ONE buff going can seriously hamper a mage. GURPS is very kind to buffs in Magic which I think is a mistake.

People aren't "Locked in" for buffs. They can switch which ones are active any time and most are a 1 or 2 second cast. Make people switch. To be honest, I'm not even worried about spells being free, I'm more worried about people glowing like christmas trees constantly. I would go so far as to say you get -5 per "On" spell to casting and have to get a technique or something to buy it off if you want a mage who "Buffs" constantly so at least you can spend a bunch of points to get your favorite buffs.

[The Colonel]

I'd be tempted to re-name Thaumatology as Magic and re-skin the current Magic as the GURPS basic spell list or something.

If you want a book that deals with magic in a game to GURPS standards, it's Thaumatology, not Magic.

[Anthony]

I would generally prefer to work energy and casting modifiers in the same way as damage bonuses from brawling, karate, etc -- e.g. "if you have a skill of at least IQ+Magery, -1 fp cost". That means high IQ and magery don't help at all for costs, they're only relevant for casting probability.

You could also extract them into advantages.

[Peter Knutsen]

Originally Posted by Jürgen Hubert

That might cause some frequent calculation on the order in which the spells are cast - mages would always start with the more costly spells and then proceed to the cheaper ones. This gets worse with the larger Maintenance Penalty I have established.

That is not metagaming. Rather, the characters who live in the world understand magic to such an extent that they know that that's the most efficient and safest order in which to cast a series of spells.

[Jürgen Hubert]

Originally Posted by Peter Knutsen

That is not metagaming. Rather, the characters who live in the world understand magic to such an extent that they know that that's the most efficient and safest order in which to cast a series of spells.

While this is true, it also drags the game down - which I want to avoid.

[Anthony]

Honestly, the easiest option is to just toss fatigue cost reduction for skill completely, and if there's spells that you really want people to be able to maintain for long periods (e.g. Night Vision) bump their duration from Minute to Hour.